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Earlier this week, the pilot for the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Under the Dome aired. Ever since learning that Brian K. Vaughan was developing the series, I’ve been looking forward to it. I’ve never read any of King’s novels, but because I exist in this universe, I’ve seen plenty of the numerous adaptations of his work. In general, I’ve enjoyed them, though there is certainly a wide range of quality. While the better adaptations have showcased the qualities that have made King’s work classic popular fiction, I have always noticed that white men tend to be at the center of his stories. While female characters are often fairly well-developed, they are usually secondary characters, commenting on the action rather than advancing it. And I really can’t think of any significant people of color in any of (the adaptations of) his work, which I’m sure is at least partly due to King’s penchant for stories about rural Maine.

With that in mind, I was curious to see what Vaughan would do with these predominately white, male primary characters. As the writer for critically-acclaimed comics that also have an good track record with gender and racial representation, I was pretty sure that Under the Dome wouldn’t end up being a totally whitewashed show where only the men are active. In interviews, Vaughan expresses a thoughtfulness in his writing decisions, which is always an admirable trait in a writer. (He also wrote for Lost, which, for all its failings, did a decent job with representation.)

So far, it seems that my suspicions have been correct. While our Chiseled Brooding Antihero, who seems thus far at the center of the story, is as white as can be, other casting decisions have been pretty impressive. So far, we have a Latina cop, who, though she seems pretty tough in her own way, isn’t a Fiery Sassy Latina. We have an alternative radio station operated by a black man and an Asian woman (who is also fat, which is so so great. I have no idea when I last saw a fat woman on TV). We have an interracial lesbian couple with a teenage daughter. We have all this truly diverse representation, with every character so far seeming three-dimensional rather than defined by their race, gender, or sexuality, AND it’s all happening in a rural town. With the exception of the couple with the daughter, all of these people are from Chester’s Mill. Often TV shows think of “rural” as code for “white,” which is both factually inaccurate and just an excuse to keep casting only white people. (Shout out to my home state, North Carolina, for acting as the filming location. I’m going to just imagine this as Chester’s Mill, NC and no one can stop me.)

Ok, so I’ve established that the quality of representation is good. But what about the actual story? you might be asking. The pilot did an commendable job establishing both the premise of the show (in short: an invisible dome falls over part of a town), and the personalities, situations, and proclivities of the characters. After 45 minutes, I feel like I know some of these characters better than I knew most of the characters after two seasons of The Walking Dead.

While there is a certain hokeyness that is nearly impossible to avoid when the show takes place in Small Town America, I’m hoping that the hints of conspiracy and corruption will manifest in a way that complicates the diners-and-sheriffs vibe of the town. Already, we have been exposed to the idea that not all parts of town are created equal, especially because of the lack of medical care in one section of the town. I’m hoping that, in the future, the show makes more attempts to subtly expose the dangerous, structural inequalities of American life that the show’s premise could easily consider.

The huge black mark on the pilot was the subplot with Junior. (Arr, here be spoilers.) When we first meet Angie and her boyfriend Junior, it seems as though they are two happy young lovers. As the scene progresses, we see that that is clearly not the case. Angie is uninterested in a serious relationship with Junior, who says he loves her and is dropping out of college to stay in Chester’s Mill. He says he has loved her since the third grade and that she’s the only one who knows the real him. She responds, “and that’s why I can’t be with you,” suggesting that Junior is not the sweet romantic he appears to be.

Then come a few moments that are hard to watch. As Angie is walking away from him, Junior grabs her arm, trying to forcibly pull her back to him. She cries out in pain, and hits him. It’s unclear, though seems likely, that this is the first time something like this has happened. Later, Junior sees Angie talking outside of the hospital to our Chiseled Brooding Antihero named Barbie and decides, as all normal boyfriends in healthy relationships tend to, that he should kidnap her and lock her in his father’s underground bunker.

The violence between Angie and Junior was, for me, the most disturbing part of the pilot. It’s the only truly questionable part of the story so far, and, given Vaughan’s thoughtfulness as a writer, I’m hoping that Angie’s kidnapping becomes more than voyeuristic titillation or an opportunity to fridge a female character. I’m also a little worried that the show’s viewers will misread Junior as some kind of misunderstood bad boy, while somehow blaming Angie for her own kidnapping. I’ve already seen reviews that describe Junior as “troubled.” From where I’m standing, he’s an abusive boyfriend.

Uncomfortable subplot aside, I look forward to seeing whether the show lives up to its casting choices and explores structural inequality and corruption through its premise. I’m also hoping for some more snappy, BKV dialogue like this:

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been re-watching Torchwood. (By “re-watching” I mean going on hours-long Torchwood binges.) Because of my bitterness about the death of practically everyone (Ianto in particular, first time around) and how the end of Children of Earth made me dislike Jack, I vowed to kick the Torchwood habit forever. Miracle Day and its whole being-on-Starz-and-set-in-America thing made me even less interested. (Call me old fashioned, but it’s just not Torchwood to me if I can’t hear those Welsh vowels from someone other than Gwen and Rhys.) I was so upset and disinterested in the show that I didn’t even want to watch the old episodes.

That changed after I watched an episode of Doctor Who with Captain Jack in it. Suddenly I was overcome with nostalgia for Handsome Jack and his crew. So, I decided to shelve my years-old grief and enjoy the show like I did before, knowing all the while what heartbreak lurked in the future.

One thing I noticed this time around is how brilliantly most of the characters are drawn. Torchwood is a haven for blurry morals (my kinda place), with Captain Jack serving as the ultimate anti-hero. Jack does what he needs to do; he’s chaotic good incarnate. (Say what you’d like about Jack, but he’s always looking out for somebody.) He’s mean and kind and brutal and thoughtful all at once. (You know, like a real person.) He also seems to know exactly what he’s doing all the time, but as the show progresses, we see Jack as helpless and clueless as everyone else more and more often.

Gwen is also one of the most successful characters. There are times I want to punch Gwen in the face, but there are other times when I find her sympathetic. Again, sort of like a real person. When she confesses to Rhys about sleeping with Owen, but then drugs him so he’ll forget, I want to shake her, but I understand that sort of impulse, even though I’ve never cheated on my boyfriend with a co-worker and then given him an amnesia pill. The only time I couldn’t fathom her actions was during “Adrift,” where she lies to and manipulates Andy for reasons I just don’t get. But, you don’t always have to like a character for her to be well-drawn.

Even Tosh and Owen, who each seem a little like a stock character, have their characters fleshed out. Owen, like Gwen, I want alternately to punch in the face and to hug. This time around, Tosh was my favorite character, which probably has something to do with the fact that I never wanted to punch her in the face. She and Owen are so wonderfully human, which makes their deaths that much more heartbreaking.

And then there’s Ianto.

The first time I watched Torchwood, Ianto was my favorite, because he was adorable, efficient, angst-ridden, and secretly hilarious, and because I was in high school. As much as I love Ianto still, I think what prevented him from being my favorite character this time around is that they did very little to humanize him (cyberwoman girlfriend incident aside). Jack was practically always associated or a motivation. I was disappointed that in the episode where we learn of how everyone got recruited by Torchwood, Ianto’s story was how he stalked/obsessed over Jack until he got to prove himself in the warehouse with the pterodactyl. I wanted a glimpse into Ianto’s soul, and all I got was more Ianto x Jack fodder. (There’s nothing wrong with Ianto x Jack, but Tosh and Owen’s stories were really devastating and interesting, but Ianto’s was sort of pathetic and silly.)

Overall, though, the characterization is excellent, which is why I wish Russell T. could run all shows. All the characters were human, even the women. Russell T. and Joss Whedon are probably my dream team of TV/movie writers, because they understand both how to make characters human and that woman are people. (However, if they did work on a show together, someone would have to stop them from slaughtering all beloved characters.)

Another major component of why Torchwood is great is its sexuality. Ianto himself is bisexual, Jack is bi/pan/omnisexual, and Tosh is seduced by a woman without it being performative. All of these sexualities (including heterosexuality) are shown as normal and nothing shameful, which is really refreshing. For some, Torchwood may be overly frank in its relationship to sex, but at least people of non-hetero inclinations can see people like themselves on TV and like them. On TV, if not in real life, they can see total acceptance of their sexuality. And even though I just labeled a few of the characters, from what I remember, there is very little talk in the show about who has what sexual preference. No one agonizes over what preference Ianto is, if he had a girlfriend but also shags Jack, or if Tosh, having been seduced by a woman, is now less heterosexual. It doesn’t matter in Torchwood. All that matters is that you’re having sex with someone you enjoy being with.

Part of me wants to try the Starz season, but part of me is scared that the parts of Torchwood I love will be done all wrong, thanks to this puritanical country. (That, and I really do mean what I say about those Welsh vowels.) Even on a channel like Starz, I fear that the nonchalant acceptance of all sexualities will disappear. I’m scared that someone in the Starz world will force Russell T. to create less human characters, especially less human women characters. But I think I will try it, because if it is awful, I can just pretend it’s a different show called Torchwood, unaffiliated with the one I love. (I did this when watching the recent-ish movie version of Brideshead Revisited, and it worked.)

Regardless of whether I try the newest season or not, I will always have the original two seasons that, despite all the grief they caused me, also gave me reasons to celebrate and find it possible to empathize with people in situations I never thought I would. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Doctor Her is a website dedicated to fan posts about Doctor Who from a feminist perspective that is also concerned with not alienating (dis)abled, trans*, genderqueer, GLBQ people, and people of color. They paraphrase bell hooks in their About page! They use the term “kyriarchy!” I can’t handle this!

I stumbled across a totally awesome post Courtney Stoker wrote called “NuWho, poverty, and class: Or, the poor women are totally screwed.” In it, she examines the lives and fates of Rose, Martha, and Donna, arguing primarily that Donna and Rose get totally shafted because of their lower class status. If you’re interested in insightful anti-oppressive commentary on Doctor Who, visit this website. Now. Well, finish this post first. But then go.

And now to explain the title of this post, I also found out today that SFX Magazine started #yestofemaledoctor and #notofemaledoctor.

I would also add that I’m sick of lazy science fiction that is only willing to challenge norms like “Time travel’s not possible!” and “Aliens aren’t real!”, but never heteronormative assumptions about gender and sex. (I also just realized that Courtney Stoker, author of the aforementioned article, also is responsible for that first tweet. Is she just the coolest person ever?)

If you have a Twitter account, please tell the world, Yes to a Female Doctor! (I’m not going to be mad if you say no, but I will wonder why you read this blog.) Even if this is never, ever going to make the producers of the show let the Doctor regenerate into a woman, the world needs to know you support challenging heterosexist norms that place men at the center of the universe! (That’s right, the whole universe!)

-Joanna

P.S. If I seem a little excitable today, it might be the cold meds talking.

Now that Doctor Who-related buzz is all over the ‘nets, I figured I’d give my take on it all.

Early last week, it was announced that, beginning with the next Christmas special, Jenna-Louise Coleman will be playing the new companion.

It’s probably unfair to say right now that I’m a little disappointed. It’s impossible to tell what kind of character she will play, especially since Doctor Who keeps itself under very tight wraps. She herself seems like a perfectly nice person and everything. I just can’t help thinking the choice is a little too safe. She’s inoffensively pretty, the kind of companion we’ve seen a thousand times. I wanted a man, or someone older, or a squishy alien, or someone who isn’t white. Something different.

There are rumors that she might be an alien and/or a lesbian. If she is an alien, I sincerely doubt that Steven Moffat would allow them to put alien makeup on her pretty face, so she’d just be an alien that looks human. If she’s a lesbian, I’m sure it will be handled completely wrong, with Coleman playing a performative, hot lesbian instead of a real-life lesbian. Besides, alien-lesbian sounds a lot more like Russell T. Davies’ area of expertise, not Moffat’s.

While I’m on the subject of aliens: Why aren’t there more of them in the teaser trailer? Why does it make it look like it’s the sequel to Cowboys & Aliens?

For those of you who haven’t seen it:

I’m tired of Doctor Who being all about trendy alt history. I like alternative history, don’t get me wrong. But I think the show has done it to death, and I want hard sci fi back. I want aliens in spaceships, not in the Old West, and as much as I love Daleks, I wish we’d see less of them, too. It always feels like they realized they forgot aliens, so they throw in some Daleks.

To make me even more apprehensive about the new season, Moffat has said that, “Who she’s playing, how the Doctor meets her, and even where he finds her are all part of one of the biggest mysteries the Time Lord ever encounters. Even by the Doctor’s standards, this isn’t your usual boy meets girl.” Someone make this pain end. What I get from this is that the story will be pointlessly convoluted instead of good, and she’s going to fall in love with the Doctor. (Or, because it’s not the “usual boy meets girl,” the Doctor falls in love with the companion, and she doesn’t fall in love with him. Inversion! Genius!)

I’m especially missing Donna’s not-fawning-over-the-Doctor ways right now. And more than anything, I’m missing Russell T. Davies. You can say a lot of things about how Doctor Who, even Russell T.-era Who, problematizes female characters. But Russell T. didn’t have woman problems the way Steven Moffat does. For some extra reading, an excellent article about Steven Moffat’s woman problem can be found here at Starburst Magazine’s website.

We can argue til we’re blue in the face about Moffat’s woman problem in the context of Doctor Who, but the fact is that if a man casts an actress because he likes her legs, he’s probably sexist. I don’t really look forward to watching the new season, but I do look forward to deconstructing it.

Amidst all the weird, non-historical programming that the History Channel is bringing us daily, there is one weird, half-historical show that I’m actually excited for: Full Metal Jousting.

The show fuses modern metal armor with the medieval rules of jousting, creating a totally awesome spectacle I will definitely be watching. (The show has already started, but I only found out about it today.) I love jousting. When I go to a ren faire (the Renaissance Faire, for all you non-rennies), even faires that follow the formulaic three-show storyline, I go to as many jousts as possible. (Although when I do go to storyline jousts, I miss having all the other tournament games that don’t involve fighting each other.) I know they’re staged, and that no one’s actually getting hurt. I don’t particularly care. Watching a joust is exhilarating and fun, and the only time when screaming things like, “Your blood will water the grass” is at all an ok thing to do. The show is championship-style, with a cash prize for the winner.

My first hesitation about the show is that jousting may not be as amazing on TV as it is in person. Sitting outside in garb, with a hundred other people who are also screaming “Your blood will water the grass” is a very different experience from lounging on the couch by yourself. Of course, that’s the same difference between seeing any sport in person and on TV. I just hope that the History Channel adequately translates jousting to TV (something I imagine is difficult).

I’m also a little disappointed, though completely unsurprised, that there are no female jousters on the show. I realize that it could be asking too much of History to feature a coed jousting tournament when there are plenty of people who refuse to acknowledge female athleticism. And History definitely seems to want to market this in a macho kind of way. Which I get. But in real life (real life being, of course, the world of historical reenactors) there are female jousters. Plenty of them. There are even all-female jousting groups like Mounted Fury.

I don’t know what the casting call for these jousters was like, or what the audition process was like for the show. I have no idea if History tried to include female jousters or not. That isn’t really my point here. I’m just disappointed that, once again, an area where women are actually prevalent participants is being portrayed as an all-male zone.

I know that if there were female jousters on Full Metal Jousting, what everyone would say to discredit the female jousters would be: Are they strong enough to compete with the others? Should they change the rules to make it easier for women? These are the questions that still haunt any discussion, intelligent or otherwise, about coed sports or allowing women to do things like try out to be Navy SEALS. Because, as well all know, all men are big muscular giants and all women are teeny little flowers. Never mind that in the “real life” world of jousting and swordfighting, women and men compete together, in both staged jousting and real swordplay.

(In case anyone doubts those statements, the North Carolina Renaissance Faire has for years included a female knight in the jousts. Bat Cat and I also used to be involved with the European Medieval Arts of Arms group, who do actual period swordfighting. Women and men fight and rise to the rank of knighthood together, and no one seems upset by that.)

So, while I will give Full Metal Jousting a try, I know that the world of jousting that the show is portraying is only a limited one. And, as much as I might enjoy it, I won’t be able to help thinking that I might enjoy it a little more if it better represented the whole of jousters.

It’s been a couple months since I first blogged about how my thirteen year-old brother is a proud Brony (a boy over the age of 10 who likes the show ‘My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’). In my graphic design class, we had to pick an article that either we wrote or found online to reformat for print and design illustration for. I knew that I wanted to use one of my blogs from Geekalitarian, and after careful consideration I chose ‘My Little Brony’.

After reading through the post again and mind-mapping ideas for illustrations, I began to think about myself when I was a middle schooler. While my brother may be obsessed with sparkly ponies, I worshiped at the altar of Tim Burton. While my brother is writing stories about ponies discovering the meaning of harmony, I wrote a story about a group of people brutally murdered who meet up in the afterlife to solve a mystery. Where Joanna and I spent gym classes discussing the virtues of various forms of torture, my brother and his friends discuss the complexities of Ponyville. For the most part, I still lean towards these ‘dark’ and macabre themes in my work. Who’s to say how long my brother will be in to ponies?

This makes me wonder what possible implications this could have. Does this say something signifigant about gender or sexuality? Some would like to think that my brother is gay becuase of his interest in MLP, a lot of other people also think that I am a lesbian. The world isn’t so black and white.

It is my hope that this comparison sparks some sort of discussion- either here online or elsewhere in your lives. The questions above that I raised are important, and I don’t know all the answers. (Although for the most part I know everything)

PS: Incase you are wondering, my illustration for this project is going to be a family photo of Burton-styled me and my brother as a pony. Once it’s finished I’ll edit this pos

For those of you who have been living under a rock, the British television drama ‘Downton Abbey’ has taken the US by storm. The Christmas special aired a few weeks ago here, and I think I finally have enough perspective to discuss the past two seasons.

‘Downton Abbey’ is centered around an old English household (both the nobility and the servants) in the early 1900s. In the first episode we meet Lord and Lady Grantham who are unfortunate enough to have three daughters and no heir. The cousin who is to take over the title and Downton upon Lord Grantham’s death tragically dies when the Titanic goes down. When they find the next successor he is- gasp and scandal- a middle class lawyer! The early 1900s was a tumultuous time for nobility (who were quickly losing power and socialist ideals were on the rise in Europe) without having to worry about their great estate being entailed away.

There are so many issues covered by the extensive plot-lines of Downton (with each episode lasting as long as a movie) that I hardly know where to begin. I will try not to be too descriptive and I hope that this will convince those of you who haven’t been swept-up to get caught up before season three (which hasn’t even aired in Britain yet, so those of you state-side have plenty of time).

Perhaps the strongest female characters in the show are the Dowager Countess Violet Grantham, Miss O’Brien and Lady Sybil Grantham.

The Dowager Countess is completely old school. Although the world around her is changing, she remains the figure of preening nobility. While she doesn’t believe in giving the vote to women, the Dowager Countess is unafraid to speak her mind, stand up for herself and her family, and bows to no one (which is probably because she is noble- but still). I think this video sums her up quite well: *SPOILERS*

My personal favorite moment:

Basically, she is the biggest badass of the show. Everyone else plays their little games, but Violet can end things with a simple quip.

Miss O’Brien is Lady Grantham’s lady’s maid and resident villain of season one. O’Brien is a scheming and bitter, but chooses to live out her schemes through Thomas a footman (who is amazing- but gay. Sorry ladies). Unlike some of the other servants we are introduced to, O’Brien does not let her class keep her down. She isn’t timid, but rather a total bitch. After Lady Grantham miscarries, O’Brien’s character goes through a transformation. O’Brien’s nastiness made her into a monster, and she can’t look at herself in the eye. The growth that we see in O’Brien makes her such a great character. One could argue that the characters on Downton are like caricatures of their roles, but we see throughout the series how they evolve into their own identities.

Lady Sybil. Oh, Lady Sybil. The youngest of the Grantham daughter, Sybil is the most genuinely kind. She believes in progress and equality between men and women, and for the most part class. The Granthams get a new driver, Branson, who is an Irish socialist. After eavesdropping while driving the ladies around, he gives Lady Sybil a collection of pamphlets on women’s rights (Adorable). Sybil constantly surprises her family with her strong beliefs and desire to wear pants. During the war, Sybil joins a nursing core and helps run the hospital and later the convalescent home in Downton Abbey itself. After what seemed like an eternity, she really dropped a bomb when she told her family that she was marrying Branson! Although her sisters tried to convince her not to, she stood up to her family and found her happiness.

And because I can:

I have high hopes for season three, although I’ve watched enough British television to know that this show is going to rip out my heart and smash it to tiny pieces (here’s looking at you, Torchwood!). After watching Downton, I feel like I’ve been spoiled. I want more television as gripping and involved as this show. If as much happened in an episode of… any other show, then maybe I would feel compelled to watch more T.V.

Also: If you do want to get caught up, I would recommend tracking down the BBC versions because the PBS versions cut out some of the content (which is crazy since most of the episodes are 1 1/2 to 2 hours long).